


if you were a city i think i'd be home

by we_the_hollow



Category: One Direction (Band), what else - Fandom
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/we_the_hollow/pseuds/we_the_hollow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when the light hits him just right, Liam can see the boy that Zayn used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you were a city i think i'd be home

Sometimes, when they’re alone; when they’re curled into each other so tight it’s hard to tell where one body ends and the other begins, when they’re sat at the island in Liam’s apartment all sleepy and barely able to hold themselves up after a long night in a club neither knows the name of, when they’re messing around under the covers, Zayn lets his guard down.

Only sometimes though, almost as if his subconscious is fighting against him, pleading, begging him to let Liam see the Zayn beneath all the grime and fumbled _I’m sorry I’m such a prick_ handjobs.

And maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable if it were brick by brick, dust and mortar falling piece by piece at his feet and filling his shoes. But when Zayn’s walls come down they crash and fall in a mighty crescendo; crumble to nothing but powder and fill the air; completely obliterated for all of a second and then rebuilt before Liam can blink again. And it is in this second that Liam is standing in the rubble, pale blue sky blotted out by a cloud of dust that’s falling down around him and settling on his skin and his clothes that he catches a glimpse, an image of the real Zayn overlaid with something harder. An image of the young boy Zayn used to be overlaid with the time in his life he took the wrong fork in the path, an image of the boy he used to be, overlaid with the few disastrous weeks it took to transform him into the worst version of himself, aged and bittered and falsified by tragedy.

Maybe it’s wrong, uncalled for, unfair for Liam to just make his assumptions, to decide that the image is overlaid at all. Maybe it’s just a misprint or a flicker of dying hope playing on a loop like a broken cassette tape. But there’s something about the diamond cut of Zayn’s features and the plasticity of his smile and the translucency of his disposition that tells Liam he’s right. There’s something in Zayn’s dull amber eyes that sparkles every once in a while, almost begging Liam to see beyond the strings attached to his limbs.

And sometimes Liam does, when Zayn lets him.

Curled into him at night, sat across from him at the island, under the covers with the sunbeams filtering through, Liam sees Zayn’s skin marked in lavender and teal. Liam sees Zayn’s wrists and thighs and the train tracks that shine through the tattoos in just the right light. Sometimes Liam sees hands and feet connecting with fragile bones and the fragile bones that try in vain to shield themselves from the hands and feet.

But only when Zayn lets him.

And Zayn is letting him more and more every day; the second turning into seconds; Liam’s shoes filling up with rubble; the boy Zayn used to be. Liam doesn’t like living in the past but if that’s where the unbroken Zayn is, then Liam figures he doesn’t mind so much because Zayn is grimy and a little used and painfully honest. Zayn doesn't try too hard and he isn't ashamed. He’s unclean, rotten at first sight, but if Liam looks closer he’s lovely. All classic architecture and built to last artwork. He’s beautiful. So Zayn is _London_ personified. So Zayn is everything Liam has always wanted.   


End file.
